


blueberries

by valleyofthewind



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Metaphors, Short, Unrequited Love, there's not really much to say since it is very much up to the reader's own interpretation of it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 15:10:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10879374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valleyofthewind/pseuds/valleyofthewind
Summary: Junhui picks up the pillow and inhales. He realises that he is breathing in the scent of fresh blueberries; sweet and tangy and suitable for a person like him. A person like Minghao. Minghao, Minghao, Minghao. The name is bouncing through his head, exploring every corner of his mind, infiltrating his brain.





	blueberries

“ _This Story Will Change Your Life._

_Disclaimer: The title is not a lie._

_This story_ will _change your life._

_Not because it is shocking. It is definitely not shocking, or even surprising. It is not extraordinary. It is not astonishing. It will not take your breath away. It will not blow your mind._

_No, it will not change your life because it is remarkable or amazing._

_This story is just a story._

_Which is exactly why it will change your life. In some way, there is always something happening which somehow changes your life. The book you just finished which you hated because of the bad ending, the Portuguese film you love that you're re-watching for the sixth time, the poem you grew tired of since you had to analyse it several times for English class, the joke your best friend makes when you are sitting together on a park bench eating ice cream. Every day, something – big or small, it doesn't matter –_ will _change you._

_Similar to the way a single flap of a single butterfly's wings at the exact right moment has the power to create a hurricane on the other side of the world.”_

 

 

 

He is six years old, and he hates blueberries.

His lips and teeth are stained various shades of blue and purple, and he's sure that it's not meant to be that way; especially four hours after he sneaked his chubby little hand into the fridge and stole a few blueberries he wasn't really allowed to eat. He says this to his mother, eyes filled with tears. She laughs and leans over and ruffles his hair gently.

“Well, Jun, shouldn't you blame yourself for doing something you weren't meant to do?”

He sniffles. “Will it stay forever?”

“The blue?”

He nods, clinging to her skirt and burying his face into her lap.

She pats his head. “Nothing stays forever, sweetheart. Not physically.”

He doesn't understand what she means. He doesn't even know what _physically_ means. He just nods and hugs around his mother's legs and she's smiling amiably and pushing his fringe away from his eyes to properly wipe his tears away.

 

 

 

 

15 years later, he meets a boy. This boy, he's fresh. He's hard around the edges yet soft, wonderful. His laugh is dulcet tones to Junhui's ears; his eyes the colour of bronze. He speaks gentle Mandarin, his voice calm even when he says something with flames in his eyes. He speaks the occasional heavily-accented Korean and English, and even though he's not always sure of the words he says, he speaks with a beautiful certainty – in a way which could be described as _a person who is in love with life and living._

Junhui stares, and the boy stares back, and suddenly they're at his apartment at three in the morning.

In the midst of it all, he finds himself thinking, _How did that happen?_ He wakes up to a post-it note with a name and a telephone number on. _How?_

The boy's scent – Minghao, his name written in neat characters reads – remains, long after he has left.

Junhui picks up the pillow and inhales. He realises that he is breathing in the scent of fresh blueberries; sweet and tangy and suitable for a person like him. A person like Minghao. Minghao, Minghao, Minghao. The name is bouncing through his head, exploring every corner of his mind, infiltrating his brain.

How he _loves_ blueberries.

 

 

 

It was supposed to be a one-time-thing. He knows this. Minghao knows this. They both know this. The entire universe seems to know this. But they can't stop. It's like a new force of gravity is made, destined to pull them together.

Two magnets drawn to each other.

One time manages to quickly lead to two times, then three, then several times a week. It's just pure euphoria, over and over and over again. There is no other way to describe it.

Once, Junhui is too caught up in the moment, and almost kisses him on the lips.

Minghao turns away. “Kisses are reserved for lovers,” he is saying. It's almost a whisper. To Junhui – it's white noise. He can barely hear it over the alarms ringing in his head.

“What are we?” he asks.

Minghao laughs. It's forced. “Not lovers. We barely know anything about each other.”

He cannot argue with this. He's aware of the truth lying thick in the words. He knew it, of course he did. Hearing it out loud hurts more than he expected it to do. “Can't we learn things– Can't we get to know each other?”

“Why?” A look shoots him straight into his eyes. “We'll never be more than what we're doing now.”

“Can't we be more than that?”

“We can't be _together._ ”

Minghao is waving his hands in the air.

Junhui is carrying a knife in his heart.

“Why?” He expects himself to automatically raise his voice. Instead finds that he sounds weak and, quite frankly, disappointed.

Minghao isn't meeting his gaze anymore. “We just can't be. I'm sorry.”

Junhui is desperate. Grasping at every single straw in the solar system, he starts, “But–”

“That's _enough_.”

He doesn't say it angrily. He says it in a distant way, almost sadly.

Minghao. Gentle, self-confident Minghao.

The conversation ends there.

 

 

 

When Junhui sees him, he wants to hold him. Every time they are together, every time he touches him in beautiful ways which cannot be described in mere words, every time Minghao opens up his flesh and heart and his soul and arches his back like he is alive on earth to do it, every time his entire body is an orchid tree blossoming on a scintillating spring day and every time he sits, stretching, on Junhui's bed with golden rivers of sun falling upon his face; he thinks about it.

He can't stop thinking about it. His entire being has a craving to hold him, to kiss him, to walk down the street and freely embrace him or intertwine their fingers. Go to a restaurant together and get merry on champagne too expensive for them. Meet his parents. Give him chocolate on Valentine's Day.

And _how he wants to_ kiss him in such a beauteous way that the world would gasp and sigh deeply at their fiery passion.

Their gorgeous, revolutionary longing for each other.

Junhui thinks about this, but only to himself. He never lets the idea of it leave a tiny wooden chest in his brain. The one where he takes thoughts and hesitation and locks them with a key. Months later, he hasn't brought up his own feelings ever again. Because Minghao was right. They will never be more than what they are now.

He continues to ignore the incurring thought resting at the back of his head. The one telling them they need to stop.

They do need to stop. They should've stopped ages ago.

But there is not a single bone in his body that knows how to.

The more he holds onto Minghao – fair, benevolent Minghao – the more it would hurt to let go.

“ _Well, Jun, shouldn't you blame yourself for doing something you weren't meant to do?”_

 

 

 

He is 23 years old, and he's out walking in the city when it starts to rain.

“Ah, fuck,” he mumbles to himself.

With a million drops of water pouring from the grey sky above, he runs to the zebra crossing and across the street to take shelter in the nearest café. Seeing as he didn't have as much as an umbrella or even a bag to protect himself from the waterfalls gushing onto the ground in that very moment, his hair and clothes are already soaking wet as he sits down and decides to order himself a slice of blueberry pie so that he can sit there without them telling him that he has to buy something to be allowed to sit there. He sits by the window and eats the pie slowly, waiting for the dark clouds and destruction of the world, the endless circle of life and death, to diminish. He waits for the sky to gradually clear up, for there to only be a minuscule amount of rainwater left to lethargically, lazily drop from the roofs of apartment houses or trees.

Which is when he sees it.

He reckons that the world is imploding, in that very moment. Every single slice of blueberry pie with whipped cream is detonating in front of him.

 _There he is._ Minghao, irresistible, benign Minghao, sitting with another man. And he is kissing him. _Really_  kissing him. Like they have both been starving for days and the only way to make up for it is by doing what they are, the way their mouths are sliding together in a simple yet ethereal way. Blissfully. Languidly. There is no mistake. He stops to smile for a second, before doing it again. The man reaches over to hold his hand softly. So, so softly. 

Junhui leaves the café without finishing his pie, and walks in the rain without caring about the way it slides down his hair and face and it almost feels as though it is suffocating him; streaming into his lungs and filling him up inside.

He thinks he starts crying, but he can't be sure.

It doesn't matter, since it doesn't show. Doesn't make a difference.

It is stupid.

Idiotic, even.

Minghao was never his in the first place. A human being is never anyone's. Never.

Junhui knows this, yet the tears stream down his cheeks like they were born to do it. _Birth, life, death._ He knows all of this, but he can't stop. He can't. He can't, he can't.

Which is worse? Loving someone who loves you back and having to let them go, or hopelessly loving someone and having to let go of every single thought and hesitation and idea you have had of them? Is life a game of, _Which is worst?_

 

 

 

Minghao calls him the next day. He doesn't answer.

He shows up at his apartment door, knocking and calling his name in the sweet, beautiful way he does. He doesn't get out of his bed.

He sends Junhui a text reading, _Did I do something wrong?? What did I do?_

Junhui almost laughs. Hours later, he replies.

_Everything._

Which is what they did. _Did – past tense._ They did everything and nothing.

For some reason, his mother's words echo around his head. _“At least, not physically forever.”_ He thinks about this, and he understands. He cries again – he has been doing this a lot recently. Crying, it's like having a piece of your individual being ripped out. A part of you replaced by sawdust. He cries even though it's unnecessary and stupid and idiotic and all of the other negative synonyms in the book and everything else he thinks of himself as he is lying in his bed with dark bags under his eyes and a steady headache.

He says out loud in his room, “Why didn't we stop? Why? Why?” and it feels as though the entire Atlantic ocean is flowing into his body; freezing waves hitting his body as he lies completely still, waiting for a signal to show that he is still alive.

 _Why didn't we stop?_ Another question he already knows the answer to. It's his fault for not having the power to let go, simply because he was selfish. It's his fault for wanting and waiting even though every inch of him knew that he would never want him back. How does one let go of a man like Minghao – a man who speaks as though he is always revealing a secret that no one else knows, a man who always has a radiant glitter in his calm eyes?

He is hurting. Not physically.

 

 

 

Around a year later, Wen Junhui stands by a zebra crossing in the city. He has, of course, already been here several times, almost every week since he moved out of his former apartment. It's seven p.m., meaning there are hundreds of cars going past in a blur. There must be over 20 people standing, waiting, on the other side of the road.

The man on the traffic light turns green, and there is the usual ticking noise which indicates that you can now walk over the road. He walks.

And then, a scent.

A single scent, among a thousand others belonging to a busy city and busy people, it washes over him. In the midst of the enormous crowd, it hits him hard enough to almost make him fall over after the initial wave of shock threatening to make his brain collapse on the spot. It knocks the breath out of him, and he is too dizzy to even walk in a straight line. He fixes his gaze to his own feet, hitting down and lifting from the ground one step at a time, but it's almost as if he can see the weird looks and tuts he is getting now.

He suddenly shoots his head up, looking around. Seeking. Searching. He looks around since he is in wont of doing it. He looks around without even realising that he's doing it.

Minghao, awful, horrendous, soul-destroying, heart-wrenching, cataclysmic Minghao, yet as picturesque and angelic and peaceful as he was the last time Junhui saw him. A few metres away him. He's looking forward, then turning his head slightly and their eyes meet. He stares at him, and he is staring back. They're walking towards each other. Faster, faster, faster. His legs cannot have ever gone faster than they are in this moment. _Faster._ The Magnet Effect.

Then Junhui tears his eyes away. He forces his legs to slow down from the quick pace they are going at. He will not repeat the same mistake. He won't, he can't. He won't. Only a few seconds of his time have passed, but it feels like he's aged more than he ever has before in his life.

He breathes in the scent of blueberries a last time, letting himself take it in; inhale and then exhale.

The circle of life.

 _Birth, life, love, hate, death._ Inhale, exhale. Repeat.

He thinks that maybe Minghao stops. To say something, perhaps. To apologise. To spit in his face. He doesn't know, and he never will, because on that zebra crossing at a couple of minutes past seven p.m. on a Tuesday, he continues walking and doesn't look back.

They walk away from each other, without exchanging a word.

They are strangers again.

 

 

 

He continues walking briskly across the street and heads straight into the café on the other side of the road.

 

 

 

He sits down and orders a strawberry shortcake.

 

 

 

He is 24 years old, and he fucking _hates_ blueberries.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is a remake of a short story i once wrote in swedish class, where the topic was "a story that will change someone's life"
> 
> you may have noticed that this is pretty different to the way i usually write. i wanted to practise a new style, i guess? 
> 
> TY for reading :)!!


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